Finally Whole
by aprilshowers14
Summary: Ziva returns from Israel exhausted. As she tries to again pick up the pieces of her newly shattered world, Tony is there to show her how truly not alone she is. Will she dare to let her trusty walls finally come crashing down? One shot of Ziva when she returns from Israel after Shiva. TIVA Major spoilers for Shiva and Shalom Shabbat.


_A/N: This takes place right after Shiva. Italics are Ziva's thoughts_

ZIva breathed a sigh of relief when she stepped out of the elevator and saw that no one else was in the squad room. Not that anyone should be here. It was 3 in the morning, but with Gibbs as a boss that didn't always matter.

She moved noiselessly to her desk, afraid to break the still silence of that dark morning. Dropping her travel bag by her desk, she sat down. A sudden wave of emotion and exhaustion swept of her.

_I shouldn't have come here._

Of all the places in DC for her to go to as soon as she got back from Israel, work should have been the farthest from her mind, yet all she wanted to do was work. Work and work and work and put all of this behind her. All the lies and betrayals. All the disappointed hopes, the callous unrelenting nature of molten lead pumped through flesh.

_Oh abba, why do I grieve for you? All you brought me was pain, yet I remember a version of you that was not so heartless. Do you remember Abba, teaching me to ride a bike? Do you remember how scared you were the first time I fell and scrapped my knee? You were so scared that you wouldn't even let Tali try to ride until I convinced you I was ok. Where did that man go? I was convinced for the longest time that he still remained, hidden behind years of aliases and wars, but in the end it seemed that he was truly lost, killed by his own sins. _

At that last thought, she shuddered. It wasn't the cold, manipulating director of Mossad that she had seen when she came into the Vance's home that night. Death seemed to have melted away the icy exterior that had always kept her Abba from her.

_I was wrong, Abba. I should never have given up on finding you again. You sins were not too great._

And yet they had been too great. She realized that a long time ago. Only his death had brought about this single redeeming quality in the man that had used and abused her all of her adult life.

_ENOUGH! _

She scolded herself. Flipping on the desk light, she searched for the something mind-numbingly productive to do and found a small stack of files that brought a small smile to her face.

_Tony._

Ever since she had disappeared for 4 months in Somalia every time she went on a trip, he had made it a point of giving her all the paperwork that accumulated while she was away. "A not-so subtle reminder" that she wasn't "allowed to disappear like that for months." Normally, she would have protested, but today this was exactly what she needed.

Pulling the stack of files closer to her, she saw Tony had left a little sticky note message on them:

"Enjoy!  
~Your loving senior field agent."

The words "loving" and "your" set off a new barrage of emotions that she could not and would not deal with right now. Regardless, she decided to keep the note, tucking it away in her pocket: a reminder of more pleasant things, of a hopeful future.

But today, there was no hope. There was a darkness that pulled her down that she could not handle. All she could do right now was work. _Beautiful mindless work_.

She soon lost herself inside the sounds of a steadily clicking keyboard and flipping pages. IT was so monotonous that she could become the robot she wished she was at times like this when the pain was too close to bear but had to be. Here the world made sense: each data point had a place in the computer system, every seemingly arbitrary detail had a purpose.

Transfixed in this world, she didn't notice the sun rise or the slow trickle of agents until a man's voice broke her concentration. She looked up, her brown eyes met concerned green ones. He apparently had asked her a question which she somehow hadn't heard.

"umm, sorry, what is it Tony?" she asked, full Mossad armor up.

Obviously slightly stunned by the cold edge in her voice Tony asked again, "I said, 'are you alright?'"

_A simple question. Of course not._ "I am fine, Tony." She said in her signature style and turned her eyes back to the computer screen.

But Tony wouldn't accept that answer. This was post-elevator them. He dropped his backpack and made his way around Ziva's desk, positioning himself so he was sitting practically on her lap as he leaned backward on her desk. Crossing his arms, he furrowed his brow and forced her to make eye contact with him again. They held this gaze, longer than Ziva had meant to. _Just look away, you can't deal with this right now. The last thing he needs is to see you in this state. _Yet still she gazed back and couldn't help but thinking how beautiful his eyes looked.

Finally, he spoke again with the same desperate voice he had used to beg her at the ariport not to become consumed with revenge , "Come on Ziva."

Her eyes flickered back to the computer screen, somehow its world seemed less inviting, somehow the real one seemed bearable. She cleared her throat, "Not here. Our usual place?"

She was now wringing her hands nervously as she waited in the men's bathroom for Tony to come. They couldn't be seen going in at the same time, that was the sort of thing that got people talking, and she didn't know what'd she do if she had to explain for the thousandth time that Tony and her was just friends and nothing more.

After a few agonizing minutes, Tony poked his head in the door, "Is the coast clear?" he asked, scanning the room. He looked so comical at the moment that a small smile crept onto Ziva's face which was clearly what he had been trying to do.

"It is just us." A lump rose to the back of her throat. Panic. To let him in now would surely cross whatever boundaries they still had, yet being here with him suddenly made that seem like not such a bad thing.

He quickly came inside and leaned against the door to bar anyone else from coming inside then looked at her expectantly.

"I…" she began but then broke off. _How to begin?_ " I am not fine, Tony." Their eyes met, and Tony saw for the first time, Ziva without any walls. This Ziva who had lost her baby sister, her mother, her brother, her father, and countless others to violence and hatred. This Ziva scared him to the core because she was so utterly broken but so utterly strong. He wondered how he could ever find a way to make such a complex woman love him. All he wanted to do was hold her close and take away all the pain this world had so cruelly thrust on her.

Ziva let out a strangled breath and looked up to keep the tears from streaming down her face. A silence filled the room as she searched for words to say, and Tony waited.

"I want to be able to be ok. But this… this has just reminded me of all I have lost. It feels like the final nail in my coffin, and the whole world is just waiting for me to fall apart. What do I have now? I came to NCIS to settle down to have some semblance of a normal life. Was I foolish to think that that was possible for someone like me?"

And before he really had time to think, Tony started to speak. Long overdue words tumbled out from the depths of his heart. "No you aren't foolish, ZIva. In fact, you're the most incredible, beautiful, intelligent woman I've ever met and…" he moved closer to her and leaned against the wall next to her. Dropping his voice to barely a whisper, he said, "and you have me. 'You are not alone' remember?"

At those words, Ziva lost all self-control. Any reason that had previously held her back from Tony suddenly seemed absurd. She gave Tony a radiant smile, the brightest she'd managed since her father had died ,leaned over, and very slowly, giving him a chance to back out at any minute, to retreat back into their game of pretending they didn't care, she kissed him.

Shock waves resounded through her whole body; never before had she had a kiss quite like this. Tony, who had initially been so surprised he hadn't done anything, quickly deepened the kiss until finally they were forced to come up for air.

"Wow" was all Tony could manage, his forehead still resting on hers.

"Yeah," she murmured with a smile, "and Tony? You have me too."

He smiled the happiest smile she'd ever seen on him and pulled her close for a hug. "You are going to be just fine. I promise you. You and me, we're going to find Bodner and we'll make him pay, and then, I'll prove to you that your life can be more then failed relationships and broke dreams." He whispered in her ear.

Ziva closed her eyes and let out a silent sigh. Never in her life had she felt so whole.


End file.
